Philip Woods, VP IT and CISO at Sbarro

WHAT WE DO:  

“Established in 1956 and celebrating a proven 60 year track record, Sbarro is the worlds’ sixth largest quick service pizza restaurant chain, operating or franchising more than 800 locations in 39 states and 21 countries. Sbarro is the only QSR pizza restaurant that serves authentic New York Pizza. We hand-make all pizzas from scratch with high-quality ingredients and bake them fresh in a traditional stone oven, all based on a strong family history.

Sbarro has been well-known for its XL New York Pizza by the Slice and has recently expanded its brand to Cucinova, a pizza, pasta and salads made-to-order concept. There are four in Columbus and one Cucinova in the Kenwood area in Cincinnati. Sbarro is being taken off-mall as well, which has been a heavy focus for me from an IT perspective, because we have introduced online ordering, delivery capabilities and kitchen store systems to support that approach. That has been a challenge and a lot of fun for me.

The company moved its headquarters and data center from New York a couple years ago and is now in Columbus. I joined a year later and have been responsible for helping to establish priorities for the business, gain their alignment and determine how we are reshape to advance the new initiatives.”

What’s the state of business technology in greater Cincinnati region? How do we compare to other cities nationally or globally? 

“Amongst the three cities, Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, the amount of investment going into technology has increased tremendously. There are new companies spawning every day, at least in the Columbus market that I’m seeing and that’s certainly good for our economy here in our little niche in the world. There is a mini startup community in Columbus – technology is pretty hot. I think Cloud is changing the landscape tremendously. The barrier is so low now, to be able to stand up something, introduce a concept or idea and see it to fruition, Cloud has removed the shackles that traditional IT once had. In the past, you had to find a partner, build out the IT infrastructure, establish all the components, but now for a few dollars, you’re basically starting up what you want to do and figuring out how to operationalize that going forward. The pace of change, the velocity of bringing new ideas to market has grown immensely.

In the past, the ability to put up online ordering could’ve taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in development, but now it’s easy to find partners with the capabilities to make that happen in very short order. It takes a little tweaking with pizza – it’s a somewhat complex environment compared to some others – but it can move along pretty quickly now.”